Ramblings of a Crowe

Tensai! Shimura Doubutsu～

Today I am going to share screen caps about one of my favorite Japanese variety shows, "Tensai!Shimura Doubutsu　（天才！志村どうぶつ園）". Basically, this means "Genius! Shimura Animal Park", or something along those lines. Tensai(天才)is the word for genius. Doubutsu （動物）means animal. And en （園）is park or garden.

Enough with the Japanese lesson, on to the show. This program is a Variety show about animals. Basically, the hosts play games, like "guess the owner" and "what animal am I" to win a taste of the some yummy food dishes. Weird, I know, but funnier than hell most of the time.

Gussan guesses correctly and wins a bite!

And the losers...well, they get to make fools of themselves on television...

　
Aiba and Suzuki show off their dancing skills. Aiba, being in an idol group, clearly has an edge.

Of course, this isn't what makes the show--at least not for me. There are other games, such as a kind of 'guess that animal' game. The contestants get a clue, then have to demonstrate what animal they think it is. This leads to some highly amusing creativity on their part.

The clue is...kame （かめ）? And it's not a turtle? えっっっっっ？(kame is turtle in Japanese)

You two are both waaay off the mark

But Aiba is on to something...he's almost got it...nearly there...A DOG! (huh?) He's so excited he loses his shoe.

But this isn't my favorite part of the show either. What makes this show so much fun to watch is when they send the contestants (who are the same each week) out to take care of different animals. They never know what animal they'll be watching over, and it could be anything from a puppy to an elephant. This makes great comedy.

Gussan meets Bambi's Angels

Even better is when they send Aiba off to so some job at the Zoo. Poor guy...

They give him odd jobs, which range from brushing and bathing the animals, feeding them or sending them back to their holding pens. He's often extremely excited and enthusiastic about the jobs he's given.

However...sometimes the cute little animals take advantage of Aiba's kindness.

This job starts off innocently enough...

...but it rapidly disintegrates into a fight of life and death. Run Aiba! Run! Incidently, after being cornered by the hungry pelicans, he sternly tells them to go home--and they do...

And sometimes, the animals are not very cute...

Oh, hell no I'm not going in there

and the reason why...

you want me to do what?

okay, this isn't so bad...

forget I said that...

And in the end, they ride happily off together into the...zoo barn

I love this show. It's so damn funny. The animals are cool, the people are a riot, and it's different than a lot of the stuff I usually watch. If you're interested in watching it, it can be found on jpop suki most of the time. Keep your eyes peeled for it!

Posted by Zoso at February 10, 2006 04:40 PM